ROBERT BURNS, 
COLONEL WESTNEDGE, 

AND 

WAIFAGE. 



E. M. IRISH. 




Printed for Private Circulation. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

Robert Bums 3 

Colonel Westnedge 49 

Waiting For a Sail 55 

The Maine 56 

A Nap in the Saddle 58 

Magdalena — A Picture 82 

Reminisce i 84 



ROBERT BURNS, 
COLONEL WESTNEDGE. 

AND 

WAIFAGE. 



%^ 







Printed /or Private Circulation. 






Copyright February ip20 

by 

E. M. IRISH 

Kalamazoo, Mich. 

All Rights Reserved 

Published January ip20 



JAN 3C 1920 



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ROBERT BURNS 

Mr. Toastmaster; — Ladies and Gentlemen; — 

I have received a very kind invitation to come to 
this banquet to-night : — It was to talk to the emigrant ex- 
iles of Scotland about Robert Burns. 

So much has been said of him in the last hundred 
years that Scotchmen as well as others have the Burns 
habit. People and critics say over and over: — what a 
poet Burns was, and what a pity he had so many faults as 
a man. 

Now it is a universal custom for people when they 
meet their friends in good weather, to tell them what a 
pleasant day it is — only it looks like rain after a little. 

This is because such a day is one of nature's richest 
gifts : — common as it is we cannot help talking about it. 

But suppose we had lived in some icy region of the 
pole, and had never seen a spring morning : — then a ship- 
load of us were suddenly landed in one of earth's fertile 
valleys. 

We should walk in green meadows — or through the 
blooming heather. For the first time we should see the 
sunny mist drift from the dew, and the dawn turning 
Westward over forest lake and river. 

We should listen to the skylark's song: — see buds 
and flowers and bloomage of orchards. We should 
breathe the balsam of the spring. 



(Delivered before the Burns Society of Kalamazoo, Jan. 25, 
1919, and Jan. 27, 1920.) 



The da3dight would dally with the gloaming till the 
buttons of the stars were pressed. Then instead of a glit- 
ter on the ice-pack, we should see the curfew planet 
blink — and watch the Maytime rising of the Pleiades. 

If through all these moving pictures we saw man 
and maid a-journey — now in joy and then in trouble: — 
how could we find language to tell each other what a 
wonderful day it was? 

Now suppose we were all together just as we are 
to-night — onl}' we had never heard of Robert Burns. 

The toastmaster might arise and say we had with us 
a wandering minstrel, who would tell us of lad and lass 
and nature : — tell us of sunlight and shadow and star- 
shine, as he saw it in Bonny vScotland over a hundred 
years ago ; — and tell it in language fresh with the vernal 
beauty of his own song. 

Then the astral of a plow-boy would step down to 
the table. ITis great dark eyes would look out at us from 
the old-time falling clusters of his hair: — and the genius 
of Robert Burns would dawn on us, as once it dawned on 
that rugged country of the Northland. 

He would tell us in the rich broguey rhythm of the 
lowlands, about Tam O' Shanter's rolic tilt with imps and 
witches: — how he rode his good gray Maggie to the cab- 
aret from Tunket — the Devil's dance at Alloway's auld 
haunted kirk. The bagpiper who led the orchestra you 
will remember, had a hyphenated foot, and a Nick in his 
name. But he was naturalized, — and Scotland was just 
like home to him. 

If the old preachers were right, — Nick had quite a 
clan of Scotchmen among his summer boarders, too. 

Then after the devil's toe-spinner — his premiere 
danseiise — had flown away with poor Maggie's tail, — the 
music would play lower on the side : — the spirits of evil 



would be laid with the story of the Cotter's Saturday 
Night, and the white haired father's prayer. 

He would tell us of sunny braes of heather and 
dark mountain tarns : — of the mavis and the laverock's 
song: — of limping hare and panicy field mouse. We 
should hear of Ben Lomond and the Lowlands : — of 
Bonny Doon and Highland Mary. 

Through his song would slide the music of rivers 
and rocky burns : — the murmur of Afton : — the youth of 
the hill-land Clyde : — the gurgle of the hermit Ayr. He 
would make us see the clear wind of Devon, and the 
drumly Logan water ;^and hear the surging of the 
stormy Forth. 

Then our thoughts of the day: — of sunny sky and 
twinkling night: — of home and happy lovers, would 
have found a voice. 

Now the spirit of Robert Burns walks the earth to- 
day. It comes with his song to banquet and ingle-side. It 
tells the story of heart and home — of love and memory — 
to boy and girl and man and woman. 

While we read. — some vagabond fiddler viols on be- 
tween the rhymes. He stole his trick where the birds and 
the rivers found tunes; and then wised the kitten- 
string's guile about the tavern taps. 

Robert Bums was a poet: but if that were all, we 
should not remember him. 

Songs are sung and we listen. Tomorrow they grow 
old and are forgotten. They die in the silence of the 
past 

Only a few send their carillons out with music time 
cannot hush. 



If we would know why a song has come to Hve, and 
why Burns is not forgotten, — we must look deeper. 

This plow-boy was born in Scotland one hundred 
and sixty years ago to-night. 

He has been accused of being a common drunkard: 
— of mocking religion and the church : — of using lan- 
guage that was unco plain ; — and of being a free lance of 
Lover s Lane. 

Even his admirers are wont to apologize for what 
they call his unhappy failings. 

The most we know about these angles in his story, — 
he tells us by writing himself into his poems. 

He wrote from his own observation and his own ex- 
perience and imagination ; and he dared to tliink out loud. 
Most of the great cloud of poets write echoes from what 
they have read in books that other poets have written. 
Some of them try to echo Burns. Real poetry doesn't 
come from books. It sometimes gets into them. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes focused Burns in one line 
when he spoke of 

"His wasteful self surrender," 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that : — 

"Not Latimer nor Luther struck more telling 
blows against false theology than this brave 
singer. The Confession of Augsburg, the Dec- 
laration of Independence, the French Rights of 
Man, and the Marseillaise, are not more weighty 
documents in the history of freedom than the 
songs of Burns." 

6 : 



But do you suppose that any man could have written 
Tarn O' Shanter and the Jolly Beggars: — poems that 
ruffle the river of melody with Minnehaha rapids: — do 
you think any one could have written them who had never 
been drunk himself? And not only that, — but been out 
with the boys when the other fellows were full too? 

Burns is his own confessor. He seems to own up to 
nearly all the faults he had time to think of. 

Other noted men of his time got drunk at their 
clubs, and at private parties. They were taken care of by 
their valets and trundled quietly home in their carriages 
and put to bed. 

If Burns dropped into a country tavern in the even- 
ing — to get a cock-crow highball — and walk home to 
breakfast: — people who were eager to believe, were sure 
that Rab the Rhymer — who v/rote the drinking songs — 
had been on a corking rouse. 

It was not much for a Scotchman to get full in those 
days. 

To-day, if he wanted to tap a jag-juice tree and draw 
a noggin of cussaline sap, — he would'nt always know 
where the sugar-bush was. 

Burns is often publicly drunk in his own poems and 
fesses up like Topsy to things he never did. 

Nance Tinnock who kept the tavern at Mauchline com- 
plained that he never drank three half pints in her house: 
— "Whatever he might say in his lying poems." 

But let us think for a minute. He lived only thirty- 
seven and a half years. He did his own work on small 
farms, and helped out his income by being a guager. 
Think of measuring all the liquor the Scotchmen of ten 
parishes drank. 

He had to work long days the most of his life : — yet 



he found time to write nearly six hundred poems. Be- 
sides these he re-wrote and improved more than a hun- 
dred old Scotch songs. The world will not let them die. 

Now where did he find the over-time to be a drunk- 
ard? 

Napoleon said that history is an agreed fable. If a 
man is talked about at all in a small town, almost every- 
thing people say is tinged with fable. Dame Rumor nev- 
er had a good repuation for truth and veracity. 

If Burns could do the life work he did, and keep his 
mental edge while full of Scotch Whiskey: — then there 
must be something in the advice Martin Luther once gave 
to a young theological student He came to him in a 
brain fog because he could not reconcile the doctrine of 
free will and predestination. Luther told him to go and 
get good and drunk. 

Moreover a Scotch tavern was not thought to be a 
very bad place. 

It was often kept by somebody like, 

"Lady Onlie, honest I,ucky, 

Who brewed guid ale at shore of Bucky." 

There is a yarn about an old Scotch couple who got 
into a quarrel one evening at their own ingle-gleed — fire- 
side: — the kind of domestic felicity they called in the 
highlands, — having a smoky chimney. 

Finally the good wife said : — "I wish I was through 
and up in Heaven.'' 

The man said : — "I wish I was down at the tavern 
with the boys." 

She said : — "That's just like you, — you always did 
want the best of everything." 



If Burns had lived fifty years earlier, he would not 
have written much about the kirk. 

Because if he had started in, there would have been 
nothing left of him. 

It was a sin of itself to write poetr}". He would 
have been excommunicated, and his own mother could 
not have sheltered him. 

Today, no one but some student of history — some 
midnight prowler in musty alchoves of old libraries — 
could restore the fossil imps of Scotland's fierce theology 
in the 17th Century. 

In the time of Burns it was physically safe to be a 
heritic, but not socially safe. The shadow of the old 
regime still clouded intellectual liberty. 

Only instead of the old gloom, — they called it the 
"Auld ijght." 

In the 17th century the clergy had made the people 
believe that they held the keys of life and death: — of 
Heaven and Hell. 

They could cause people to die when they willed, and 
send them where they belonged. 

It w^as a sin to laugh out loud on week days, and to 
smile on Sunday. 

God was a wizard of vengeance who had doomed all 
but the fev/ elect to an eternal hell from the beginning of 
time. 

This ?Teil wasn't the kind of sulphur spring where 
you go just to mope, and get toned up with a course of 
the blues — and then resign. 

The miserable sinners were slung up by their tongues 
and sizzled in incandescent brimstone. It smelt like fumi- 
gating sin. 

Short sermons about the bottomless pit were from 
two, up to five hours long; and often the preaching was 



done by relays, and the people had to take it all day — no 
eight hour day at that. 

Infant damnation was one of their most cheerful 
hobbys. 

The devil was out all the time with his staff of imps. 
They could hear him in the night bellowing like a bull. 

Sometimes he made up as a preacher; and sprung 
secular antics to queer the clergy. 

This however was a blessing in disguise to the 
preachers: — for if they did fall for one of his tempta- 
tions — and got caught — the devil himself had to stand for 
it. 

This was fair enough to Satan. Turn-about is fair 
play ; and theology was advertising his resort and sending 
him trade. He challenged publicity. 

Old cloven foot Clutie used to carry people away by 
their hair. 

The saints who were saved, were allowed to lean 
over the battlements of Heaven and look on at the goat 
barbecue. 

They enjoyed the prospect of this movie show im- 
mensely. 

Also the pleasant bowlings of their dam.ned old 
neighbors would help to make Heaven joyous. 

Even mothers were to grow so saintly as to feel a 
holy joy at seeing their wicked babies fried in the Devil's 
skillet. Wasn't it all the mess of that horrid Eve any- 
way? 

The Spanish inquisition alone equalled that era of 
superstition. 

Its hypocracy was beyond belief. 

In the time of Bums it still retained a tyranny over 
the mind. 

It was this theology that he trimmed. 

10 



Instead of being a scoffer at religion, he turned out 
to be a reformer of the church, and did much to make it 
temperate. 

In his time in Scotland, when the sacrament was 
administered, it was the custom to put up a tent outside 
the meeting-house and have preaching throughout the 
day. Sermons were roared out, with prayers that Burns 
said were "Three miles long." 

The people young and old came from all the country 
round to attend these — "Holy Fairs" — as they were 
called. 

They brought lunches of bread and cheese and en- 
tertained each other. 

Ale and whiskey flowed like the Doon in Tarn O' 
Shanter. 

A Scotch lassie was supposed to take a nice lunch 
along and invite a "Billie", to pair off with her. A girl 
that couldn't take the cheese, and a lad that didn't get a 
lass was in hard luck. 

An employer was considered real Scotch mean, who 
wouldn't let a poor girl who worked out, draw on the 
larder for a can of bait to catch a laddie with. 

The scandals and drunkenness at these sacred sheep- 
folds, would make an old fashioned camp meeting blush 
carnation. 

At Mauchline the tent was in the church yard, and 
had a back entrance that led to Nance Tinnock's tavern. 

It wasn't any trouble to get a congregation to turn 
out. And they took up a good collection at the portal flap. 

A tent in the daytime without modern electrics, had 
but "Dim religious light." It was almost as snug for the 
boys and girls as a back parlor with the gas turned down. 

On a cloudy day the tent would be as full of little 
devils as Kirk Alloway was when Tam saw it. 

11 



Then Burns wrote his "Holy Fair", and drew the 
show as it was. 

He finished with an envoy that pictured the conse- 
quences with a reahsm Gustave Dore and Hogarth would 
have envied. 

Three hundred years before, — T^eonardo Da Mnci 
painted his picture of the "Last Supper" on the convent 
wall at Milan. 

Long afterwards a squadron of Napoleon's cavalry 
stabled in the convent, — and the cinocolo was marred 
with the rude retouch of war. 

Strange travesties ; — the grotesque carnival by the 
banks of Ayr, and the hallowed fresco from the renais- 
sance of Italy. One with the aroma of cheese and whis- 
key for incense, — and the medieval marvel pelted with 
the stable middens : — the Galilean's picture over the 
mangers smutted by the graceless troopers. 

Of the flock that went home at night across the 
moors, — the poem runs : — 

"There's some are full of love divine, 
There's some are full of brandy." 

It ends with some words you can find in a Scotch 
glossary. But my dears you m.ustn't look them up. 

Burns is said to have recited this poem to the crowd 
over at Nancy's reception. 

It edified them more than the limbo gas and depth 
bombs exploding in the tent across the way. 

They saw a reel of themselves taken by a vivid cam- 
era. 

12 



He had said nothing irreverent ahout the sacrament 
itself. 

But the kirk was in an uproar, and gave liim a ticket 
marked — good for a sulphur bath. 

The result was tliat these annual reunions of saints 
and sinners were sent through the laundry. 

A w*ay was found to commemorate the Lord's supper 
without getting drunk and hugging the girls. 

"The Holy Fair" was the best sermon on Scotland's 
Merry Hell : — on religion and temperance and sex mor- 
ality, preached in that generation. 

The preacher was full of his subject, and talking to 
fellow sinners. 

Burns tells us more in his poems that is said to re- 
flect on his morality. 

Again he is his own confessor. 

In one of Guy De Maupassant's stories, a Paris lov- 
er went at midnight to the cemetery of Peer I^a Chaise — 
the Westminster Abbey of France : — or dreamed that he 
did. There he read the epitaphs, the flattery of friends 
had traced on the marbles. 

Then it seemed to him that all the ghostly populace 
of that hillside arbor, rose up and re-wrote on their monu- 
ments in luminous letters, — the truth about themselves. 

If everyone in this room to-night were to write the 
secret history of their hves — and print it: — or if the 
stenographer of the recording angel were called before 
the grand jury with her minutes : — how many of us 
would be left to cast stones at the memory of Burns ? 

His songs are his monument, and into them he has 
written in spirit fire his honest epitaph. 

But many people who read them, do so with the 
gossip idea of the righteous old lady. She hoped to be re- 

13 



warded with a front seat at the day of judgment where 
she could Hsten comfortably to everybody's secrets ; — 
and then go out calling in Heaven and talk things over. 

Ithuriel must have been Burns' good angel and 
loaned him the frog-spear he frisked the toad with — 

"Lang vSyne in Eden's bonny yard." 

The false is unmasked and the real shines out in 
these poems. There! 

The more T think it over this Ithruiel touch is correct. 
Besides ; — it sounds literary and Miltonic. 

Satan hops out so often in Burns and looks so devil- 
ish natural. 

There is the same tingle of electric steel that flicked 
off his toadskin domino in the orchard. There he was: — 
reciting Burns to Eve. and making her think she had to 
get some kilts for the family. This was when little Eva 
was quite young too. 

Burns wrote about a mouse, a rabbit and a sheep, — 
also a calf and a louse ; — but a toad — never. 

His devil wears full evening dress — the spike-tail 
and some horns, and he puts his second best foot for- 
ward. 

It is a good honest Scotch Devil that wouldn't play 
toad if it could — not when the spear was in sight. 

The experience Burns wrote from was genuine — the 
kind that comes to the everyday life of man and woman — 
not the sort that epitaphs relate. 

Benvenuto Cellini wrote an autobiography that is one 
of the wonders of literature. 

If he v;as half as tough as he made himself out to be 

14 



(which I doubt), — he was the bad man of Italy. Yet I 

suppose he was not worse than the men about him who 

masked their lives. 

Saul of Tarsus claimed to be "Chief of vSinners." 
He doubtless intended this in the poetical sense. — not 

as a plea of guilty at the bar of biography. 
Goethe wrote of poets : — 

"None in prose confess an error, 
But we do so void of terror 
In the Muses' silent groves." 

John G. Whittier — the Quaker poet of New England 
— wrote a very pretty poem about Burns. But in it he 
regrets and apologizes. 

He speaks of 

"The evil strain" 
"The discord and the staining." 
"The ribald line" 
"While falls the shade between 
the erring one and Heaven." 

John G. Whittier was a good man. But he could not 
understand Bums. Of course not. He never took a 
drink of Scotch whiskeAT — never kissed a pretty girl: — 
never had a good time in his life. 

He was a nice lady-like old bachelor v/ho needed a 
shock absorber. So he made his jingle and gave us a 
naughty little musical Burns, — who should be forgiven, 
because some of his poems were really sweet and proper. 

H you would know the difference between the two 
men : — open W^hittier's book. Reading the rhymes is like 
taking a quiet buggy ride behind a docile old gelding. 

15 



You will not be run away with, nor tipped over.. 
You shall not get a jolt. 

Take up Burns and you open a nature's wonder 
book. You might as well try to harness a wild stag of the 
Highlands — like the one the Knight of Snowdown steep- 
le-chased in Lock Kathrine's rocky glens. 

The black St. Hubert hounds were bushed: — his gal- 
lant gray fell dead : — Fritz James himself was love-struck 
— (He was a Scotchman) : — ^but the stag is there yet — 
where Walter vScott left him. 

All your neat bundles of conventionality will be 
smashed to Anders, and kicked down the mountain 
losses. 

If Burns had been given Whittier's chance at slavery, 
— he would not have written decorus moral essays in 
rhyme. The world Avould have roared slavery downi 
when it read the Holy \^'^il1ie stufif he would have pulled. 

Yet in those lines, Whittier probably expresses the 
popular opinion of Burns : — that is among those who 
think they could have improved nature's handiwork if 
they had the making of him : — the ones who would grade 
Mt. Blanc down to a city park, — and tame a splendid wild 
am'mal like Bobby in its zoo. 

He tries to reach up to Burns' shoulder and pat him 
on the back. 

.It is the conventional way of looking at Burns. But 
conventional spectacles never focus well. The lenses are 
never acromatic. False colors and reflected lights tinge 
and distort the image. 

Through them we cannot see the honest manhood. 

We miss the glint of the springy whinyard that 
pinked the joints of hyprocricy's armor. 

We lose sight of the bold strokes tliat fell on relig- 
ion's tyranny. 

16 



Nor do we see the brave boy father. 
And then we lose sight of the inspiration he was to 
others. 

Over a hundred years ago, in a log cabin in an 
American wilderness, — another rugged independent boy 
was born. 

He read by pitch-pine candle power, and the hearth- 
log's fitful glow. Only here and there could he find a 
book. But one of them was the poems of Burns. It had 
an influence over him that helped to shape his life and 
mould his gift of deep poetic language. 

The heart of Scotland spoke to the child of the 
Western clearing; and he grew up another of nature's 
men, — to stand for truth and right and liberty. 

The one who spoke was Robert Burns. 

The one who read was Abraham Lincoln. 

It w^ould have been worth something to the Scotch 
plow-boy if he could have known in his lifetime that his 
song was to be inspiration to another boy poor as himself, 
— who was to become the greatest president in the history 
of republican liberty. 

But Burns is criticized for some of his love songs. 

Civilization brings boy and girl, and man and woman 
together. 

But it cannot still the tide that nature set a-throb in 
their arteries. 

Civilization is garrulous as a m.agpie mob about trust- 
ing the people. But it does it with cash registers and se- 
cret ballots — and non-refillable Scotch Whiskey bottles. 

Of all things that it does not trust, — is love itself. 

It loads it with conventional chains, and trys to make 
it walk in fetters. 

17 



These chains never were strong enough to hold. 
They are continually broken. Then society lets the man 
go free and damns the girl and brands the offspring. 
Down in our hearts we all know this is wrong. 

Unmarried motherhood rocked the cradles of Homer 
and Boccacio ; — of Leonardo Da Vinci, and Alexander 
Hamilton. Their laurels will not fade. 

There is a long line of others whose names the world 
has placed in its treasury. A longer line has been ban- 
ished to social waifdom. 

This so called civilization has made a holy impulse 
that was meant to summ.on a spirit from the deeps. — the 
foxy joke of the centuries — and their dreary tragedy. 

As those mothers — over whose marriage no ritua! 
was ever chanted — sang their lonely lullabys : — Shakes- 
peare and Burns and Hawthorne saw the light that never 
faileth — the mystery light the infinite made to dawn in 
the mother eyes before a ritual was ever dreamed of. 

Walter Scott saw it shining when he wrote the story 
of Effie Deans in the Heart of Mid Lothian. 

It looks out through the pathos of Bonny Doon. Tn 
some of Burns' other poems it fires with a world defiiant 
glance — like a tigress at bay with her kitten. 

But civilization came — with the parish penance stool 
and the scarlet letter. 

Now if Burns were here to-night: — would you look 
into the daring eyes of Scotland's troubador, and qui;te 
that pious cant of Whittier's ? Would you say : — you 
wrote some pretty rhymes : — but you ought to be 
ashamed, — because you made some songs to the brave 
mothers of the age's splendid wastrels ? 

H a higher civilization ever dawns on this rude bar- 
barian planet : — if charity of the heart ever means what 
the angels sang over the manger of Bethlehem: — no one 

18 



of Nature's mothers will sit as an out-cast beside her cra- 
dle. 

She who guards the slumber of an exile — washed 
ashore from tides of the ether — should find a Red Cross 
in all the world. 

As evolution turns the mill-wheel of the gods, it 
sometimes gives us a type of immortal youth. 

Right here it seems as if a small lantern balloon 

o 

should be cut loose. One lit with a classical jack would 
come handy with the spear. 

O yes ! The type of course comes fresh from prime- 
val woodlands, where Goat- foot Pan — the dean of bag- 
pipers — played to fauns and satyrs: — piped them till the 
jocund earth went reeling underfoot and kicked like the 
floor at a Highland fling. 

Along with them, forest nymphs in artless innocence 
romped — sans rompers — a-down the glades of Arcady 

This is proved beyond question by some of the finest 
paintings in the garners of art. 

We feel sure they were done from life. 

Now a rough h-u-r-r-r grew thick in the Lowlands — 
the Lallands — that at one time was not well understood. 
But it seemed it could be fashioned into rustic Pan-pipes 
that tuned an unblown melody in their fluty chanters. 

And skippers were ready for the fandango. There 
were fauns and stayrs that could dance on cloven hoofs. 
Besides the notch-foot drolls from Hades, — these were 
nags and calves and even sheep. For memory grieves in 
elegy over poor Mailie — the matron ewe. It recalls the 
sweet maternal heart that blessed onto her children the 
priceless legacy of virtue. 

For elves, — came bunnies with long silky ears, and a 
field mouse. 

19 



This was no happy home gimlet-eye, that expects to 
have its cheese toasted — and then served with a kick in it. 
The meadow-mouse has a patrician air and is beauti- 
ful. The ladies need not get on a chair when they see 
one. If it wants to hide — it retires in a refined way into 
an underground ainbush. 

For nymphs tliere were bonny Jeans and Anna with 
the golden hair. There was Nannie, who wasn't away 
all the time ; — and then Clarindas and Peggies and Phillis 
and Chloris. Kppie Macnab was "Down in the yard 
a-kissin the Laird," and Tibbie Dunbar came in her coatie. 
They were not all country lassies. 
When the liigh-kick was on the lawn. — Jenny Gor- 
don — Castle Gordon's frolic Duchess took the bannock. 
Jenny 

"kilted up iier kirtle weel 
To show her bonny cutes so small, 
And walloped about tlte reel 
The lightest louper o' them all." 

Of shepherd wags there Vv^ere plenty: — Duncan Gray 
and Davie, and Jumpin John and Jockie. 

There was Willie Wastle whose wife was a joke with 
a clapper tongue. 

The joke is an old one. Other fellows have heard it. 

Holy Willie was also a goat — the best one ever. But 
this Capricorn — like all Willie-goats — is kind o' smelly. 

What flingers to spin the Maypole dizzy! 

The piper who blew the goblin music for the reels 
and waltzes was a plow-boy who made the glens of Ayr a 
wild sweet A ready. 

So far as J know Burns is the only minstrel of the 
people, who with nature's abandon has played this Lang- 
Syne I^yriad down the years and held the stage. 

20 



What other poet is given a reception every year? 

Tom Moore wrote verses he tried to suppress. They 
were artificial attempts to pose as a witty rake. 

But an expurgated edition of Burns would not go on 
the market. People know the difference between A ready 
and Walt Whitman. 

If Burns steps over the bound of conventionality, it 
is the call of the wild — the mating of the skylark in the 
purple heather. 

It drops down from the blue 

"and thinks nae shame 
To woo his bonny lassie 
When the kye comes hame." 

Scotland's laverock you shall not cage : — 

"His lay is in Heaven ; 
His love is on earth.'' 

If Emerson could say Burns struck blows like those 
of Latimer and Luther against the dismal theology of 
Scotland : — so may we say, that he sang the hope songs 
of mortals for the v/ayfarer and the out-cast. 

It is easy to say that Burns wrote many a jingle that 
is not poetry. So have all the poets. A poet like other 
artists is known by his best efforts — not by his worst. It 
is as if we should go to hear a great pianist like Pade- 
rewski play. We should listen spellbound to the magian 
touch on the keys. Then a phonograph might be brought 
in, and we compelled to hear the records of his early 
piano practice and crude experiments. 

We often listen to the Burns' victrola. 

21 



"The very sweepings of his desk,"' were gathered up 
after his death and pubHshed. 

Besides the old Scotch songs that he revised, the 
world has 562 poems that he wrote — perhaps a few more, 
in his h'fe-time he pubHshed and edited only 88 of them. 

He has been called unthrifty for not getting the otl.ver 
474 on the market. 

Unthirfty he was no doubt. When the poet's saddle 
liorse has to v/ork for its board, — the wings are always 
getting snarled with the belly-band. 

But the evident reason why he did not publish, — is 
that a poem is generally an evolution that goes through 
many stages from crude to finish. 

There were writings he had not finished and put in 
shape for publication. 

He threw off careless rhymes and passed them out to 
friends, which he never intended to publish. 

Quite a number of poems are attributed to him which 
he never wrote. 

We do not have a Burns' book as we have a Tenny- 
son — revised and polished by a long-lived author. 

If he had lived, much would have been suppressed 
and much changed. 

It is the tarrying re-touch of the artist's burin that 
cunnings a marble of Praxitiles — an easel of Leonardo; 
— or a page where the Linden bees of Virgil tree. 

So of the rhymer's song-pad. 

Burns wrote; — ''I glower and spell." 

The impromptu rhymes are muffled, by him who 
knows the flavor of the ripened song. 

When we come to his letters: — The British Islands 
have been swept for scraps of paper. Thoughtless letters 

22 



— some of them written when he was a boy — were bought 
up and published. 

Many of them are garbled. Many indicate only the 
trouble or whim of the moment. 

Writers on Bums often show a guileless innocence 
of satire and humor when they construe som.e of the pass- 
ages literally, and sort out trifles for sermon texts. 

They are like a skipper who would steer by floating 
islands and meteors, instead of by rocky headlands aud 
the stars. 

Who could pass the ordeal of having every letter he 
ever wrote put m print and discussed by people who could 
not — would not — understand. 

Who would care to receive friendly letters written to 
be published? 

Skilled anatomists dissect men's bodies after death. 

Writers with little knowledge of human nature have 
carved the heart of Burns with dull scalpels. 

But then ! One must have faith to read biography — 
and charity. As for hope : — leave it all behind — ye who 
are lilieiy to get caught in a write-up. 

If some sybil would burn the music lessons of all 
the poets — and leave us their successes — we could save 
some valuable paper in these times. 

There would be no striking printers — only striken 
poets. 

Put where are the magi of literature wise enough to 
be trusted? We differ among ourselves, and each genera- 
tion differs, as to what is best and worst. 

The seers of the future will think they know more 
than al! the past. 

If we took up a newspaper or a magazine, and saw 
a funny caricature from an artist's pencil, — one that 

23 



turned like a search light on to some error of today : — \Vp 
should all recoQjnize it as a caricature. We should realize 
its force. No one would say that the picture was wron;^ 
because it was not true. The drawing would show the 
truth like a microscope by magnifying some part of the 
subject. 

Hut people read Bums and Dickens and do not real- 
ize that they are continually drawing caricatures. 

They lind fault with both these authors. And yet 
the prose author the people read the most is Dickens, — 
and the poet they know the best is Burns. Many know 
Burns who never read one of his poems. Sayings and 
snatches of his songs pass in everyday conversation often 
without a thought of where they came from. 

The ideas and plans of his poems have been worked 
over by minor rhymesters with many a scrannel note. 

In the war of the rebellion, funny cartoons by 
Thomas Nast were worth regiments to the Union cause. 

The ca'-toonists of today have been equal to fresh 
army corps for the allies. 

Selfish wrong and hypocracy fell before the novels of 
Dickens and the poems of Burns. 

No one with a classical education that isolated him 
from everyday life, and the everyday thought and talk of 
the people, could have written these poems No one 
who was not a wine bibber and a friend of publicans and 
sinners could have written them. 

The Stmday School teacher asked little Mayme what 
we must first do in order to have our sins forgiven. 
M.-iyme sai(i :-- -"We must first sin." 

A man who has been a good executive sinner him- 
self, is all the better at helping other people. 

24 



Bums had sympathy for those who shared his lot of 
toil. Pie had the hatred of canting hypocracy, and the 
independence to speak out. 

Now who was he to associate with? 

Holy Willie and the solemn hide-bound elders? 

Should it be with men on whom the fear chill rested, 
and who not only did not dare to speak, but were afraid 
to listen? 

No! Tlicre was another Willie, — who 

"brewed a peck of malt 
And Rob and Allan came to pree. 
Three blither hearts that lee-lang night 
Ye vvad'na find in Christendie.'' 

The Willie was William Nicol — a teacher of classics 
in the Edinburgh High School. 

Allan was Allan Masterton — a music teacher in the 
same school. He was a poet himself, and composed the 
airs to some of Burns' songs, including this one. 

The Rob was Burns. 

As the glasses clinked, they skoke out, and said what 
they thought. They told the truth from their heart-deeps. 

The celestial thrill of the Scotch whiskey was like 
the sting of the wide-winged angel's lance. 

In every foam bead that reveled on the jorum there 
lurked a pawky imp with a fancy or a rhyme. The sup- 
pressed thoughts of the day danced on the bubbles of 
night. 

Doubtless at the familiar touch the Tam O' vShanter 
piper, — came also, and played some good tunes on the 
side. They say he always did have the best ones. 

John Barleycorn is a freebooter of ideas. He cov- 
ered Scotch territory. 

25 



Where he went men talked out loud. 

Hell was adjourned 

Scotland began to stop roasting babies : — or at least 
didn't cook them as well done as it could ; — and stopped 
making unfortunate girls get on a stool at church. 

Much of what the purist critics call coarse in Burns 
was not considered so in his times. We change our words 
with each generation in the effort to get smooth glossy 
ones that don't mean quite as much as the old ones. 

As use makes their meaning plain again, and they 
no longer conceal thought, — they must be covered with 
new camouflage. 

Those whose primsie noses perk up at plain talk are 
generally the ones who need it most. 

The old Scotch songs of the time of Burns were rank 
and smutty even for those days. The ones that he re- 
wrote are refined and tempered. 

Instead of being coarse, — he was finer than his age. 

If we criticise his language we reflect on our own 
personal ancestors who lived in his generation. 

At times his rhythm is like a mellow Cremona. At 
others it is rugged and whacks like a stout cudgel. 

The strolling fiddler had tasted the blood of the 
T'^ibelungen dragon, and kept its talisman — the gift to 
know what the wild folk- music tells. 

To him the babble of birds and rivers and the jungle 
ululu — came like the patois of the hamlet — the burry 
lingo of the Lallands. 

Burns was the poet of everyday people and used 
their language. But he proved to be the poet of all classes 
and taught them to know his language. 

When the kilted regiments, — "The Ladies from 

26 



Hell", — as the enemy called them — went over the top to 
the tune of Scots that bled with Wallace : — even the Ger- 
mans could understand the ululu of the North. 

For their onset harked to the olden day, — when the 
Highland claymores lit with battle lumin, and the pi- 
brochs keened the winds of Killiecrankie. 

Then as Aytoun wrote : — 

"Like a tempest down the ridges 
Swept the hurricane of steel, 
Rc^e the slogan of Macdonald, — 
Flashed the broadsword of Locheill. 

"And the evening star was shining 

On Schelhallion's distant head, 
When they wiped their bloody broadswords. 

And returned — to count the dead." 

The story of Burns has been told in patchwork quilt 
style by many biographers and editors. It is checkered 
with contradictions and their quarrels with each other. 
The seams are puckered with moral homilies and the 
rivalry of publishers. Mosaics are not the happiness of 
art. 

The Burns we read about is in many ways a myth- 
man — much in the class with King Arthur and Robin 
Hood. 

The dark-room negatives from different cameras 
make a composite photograph. 

There are three kinds of fiction: — novels, history, — 
and then most fabulous of all — biography. 

He is fabled in fantastic slander — the libel that stabs 
behind the mask of half truth. 

27 



Robert Burns was born on the 25th day of January 
1759 at the hamlet of AUoway in the county of Ayr in 
Southwestern Scotland. 

His father was a small tenant farmer. In those days 
most of rural Scotland was tilled by tenants. 

We are often told that Robert was born in a hovel. 
It was what was called a "Clay Cottage." It was built by 
his father, and was a better home than most of the neigh- 
bors had. To be sure part of a gable end blew in when 
the boy was a week old. But "Winds frae aff Ben Lo- 
mond blaw," and are often rough with gables and things. 

Daniel Webster, Abe Lincoln, and many prominent 
Americans of generations later than Burns were born in 
log cabins. 

Log houses and clay cottages were the family man- 
sions where the old folks lived. 

They were not considered hall-marks of poverty and 
hardship. They belonged to the democratic order of ar- 
chitecture. It was not Corinthian — not Doric. Perhaps 
it was like the residence a man of moderate means put up. 
He said it was "Queen Ann front, and ^Tary Ann at the 
back." 

It is a common statement that Burns was not edu- 
cated. 

Professor Wilson — the famous Christopher North 
of Scottish literature — says that "Not a boy in Scotland 
had a better education than Burns." 

His father and some of the neighbors clubbed to- 
gether and hired a good schoolmaster to teach their 
children. The father also taught his family at home. 

At the age of eleven Robert was considered an ex- 
pert in English grammar, and soon was apt in mathema- 
tics. 

28 



But it makes the chronicle sound democratic to say 
that he was an ignorant boy born in a hovel. 

In Abe Lincoln's case it adds zest to tell that yarn 
about the log house he was born in, having only three 
sides. Logs were plenty, and a fellow would have hard 
work to build such a house without all the sides to hold 
np the notclied log-ends. 

Biographers are almost always architects — of the 
other fellow's fortune. 

Those of Burns made some very blue prints of his 
character. 

He read every book he could get hold of. The love 
of reading builds education. Without it a boy can be 
standardized through a college and a professional school 
and not be educated. 

There were not many books in those days. Now we 
have too many. 

\Vhen quite young he read Pope and Shakespeare, 
Locke and Allan Ramse)\ 

He even read a theological treatise on the Doctrine 
of Original Sin. 

H anything would make a boy an expert in sin, — 
that ought to qualify him. 

He worked on a farm. Not a bad thing for a young- 
ster. The one who never did, has skipped a branch of 
liberal education. 

He worked for seven pounds a year and his board. 
That would be about thirty-five dollars of our money: — 
In tliose times equal to about $245.00 now. Not the ran- 
som of an American citizen caught in Mexico, — but very- 
well for a boy learning to be a farmer. 

He also vexed his father and some other good people 
by going to a dancing school. 

29 



You need not expect the ghost of the elder Burns at 
the party to-night. 

He went to a good scientific school at Kirkoswald to 
study mathematics mensuration and surveying. 

This was near the smuggling coast of Scotland. The 
smugglers did not run goods in with automobiles. They 
used sailing vessels. 

There were white sails above the deck, but 

"Sometimes she wobbled, for be it told, 
Casked in the dark of her roomy hold. 
Gurgied the liquor of pleasant sin, 
Rum of Jamaica and Holland gin." 

Ihe smugglers were a bold and hardy crew. They 
were quite popular with people who drank. In those days 
that meant almost everybody — including the preachers. 

But the preachers said such long graces before the 
can was tossed, that the whiskey got old enough to start 
Auld Lang Syne. 

Their blessings made time between drinks as long 
as war time prohibition. 

To-dav. — 'time turns backward in -its flight', — and it 
is Longfellow whiskey. It has found its Lost Youth, and 
is too yotmg to love 

One swig, — and a fellow says O My * * * ! — well 
he says — "Deleted" — instead of — Halleluiah ! 

The sailors believed in the old Indian's maxim that- 
— "Too much rum is just enough." They showed folks 
how to combine tax dodging with pleasure. 

If the people had no revenue liquor or contraband 
goods, tb.ey used home made brands. The art of home- 
brewed ale Avas well known. 

We talk about dandelion wine. 

30 



Robert Louis Stevenson wrote ' ' 

"From the bonny bells of heather 
They brewed a drink long-syne 
Was sweeter far than honey 
Was stronger far than wine." 

The young Burns was attracted to the jolly smuggler 
parties. He learned to be a mixer where their social glass 
went round. Among them he said he made great progress 
in the knowledge of mankind. At the same time he did 
good work at school. 

It was at the smuggler's taverns he met some of the 
characters he wove into Tam O' Shanter and the Jolly 
Beggars. 

Burns went back to his home and mingled in the rural 
life of Scotland. 

What was it? 

The people were mostly tenants — many of them poor 
— and with large families. There was little pleasure for 
the young people except as they found it where they could. 

Boys and girls worked together in the harvest field. 
They were much together in the evening. They fell in love 
like other boys and girls and were too poor to marry. 
Then as an old vScotch woman said : — "The quickest way 
to get rid of temptation is just to yield to it" 

The world long ago found out that the most fascinat- 
ing of all sports is hunting for temptation with intent to 
make it unanimous. 

Odd customs grew up. 

It never was the Anglo Saxon common law that a 
ceremony was necessary in order to make a valid mar- 
riage. 

31 



A contract between the parties — even a verbal one — 
if carried out, made tlie marriage legal. This was the law 
of Scotland. This is the law of Michigan today. 

Such a marriage may be difficult to prove : — it may 
make the parties liable to penalty, but the marriage is 
valid and the children legitimate. 

The prestige of ceremony however, was strong. To 
comply with it, customs were invented which would co- 
caine almost any docile conscience. 

One of them was called — "Handfasting." If a boy 
and girl squeezed hands with the right grip and promised, 
— it was considered a marriage. There was no reason 
why it should not be, — if the parties were competent to 
make any marriage. 

But there is a moral to this story. If a girl's hands 
get cold, — she ought to be wise and wary about the kind 
of muff she picks out to warm them. 

There is a Scotch spinster song that runs like this ; — 

"Now, lads, and there's ony amang ye 

Wad like just upon me to ca, 
Ye'll find me no ill to be courted, 

For shyness I hae put awa'. 
And if ye should want a bit wifie 

Ye'll ken to what quarter to draw ; 
And e'en should we no mak' a bargain 

We'll aye get a kissie or twa." 

These customs led to some laxity and confusion in 
forming the marriage relation. It was often necessary to 
set back the almanac. 

They led to near marriages. 

They were like near beer, — only about one and a half 
per cent matrimony. 

32 



In near beer the foam indeed is willing but the spirit 
is weak. 

We have no statistics of illigimate births that go back 
to those times. We know there were more of them than 
there are now. The Scotch percentage among the poorer 
people is large today. 

Scotland would not tolerate a foundling hospital. 

Where poverty and stringent statutes curb open mar- 
riages the laws of nature enforce themselves. 

The old laws were barbarous. At one time an un- 
fortunate mother was drummed through the town to the 
whipping post. 

The church assumed to deal with the question. The 
parties who were caught had to stand up — or get on a 
stool — at Sunday meeting. Then they had to listen to a 
personally conducted Jeremiad from the preacher — that 
is the poor did. Those who were rich, or belonged to the 
nobility were allowed to compound with a fine. They sat 
in the audience and heard their humbler neighbors, — 
^'admonished." 

The preacher whetted his whittle edge till the melted 
sulphide flew like sparks from an emery wheel. 

The landlords looked on with Chessy cat grins and 
clinked the plate with coin the tenant farmers paid their 
stewards. 

An entertainment of this kind drew a full house, — 
and that meant a good collection. 

It was as good a show as bear-baiting, or a badger 
fight. It gave the congregation a taste of Heaven on 
earth to see the other animals — verberated. 

Lots of people would like to go to such a function 
today. 

Those talks were too long. Five gentle words — 

33 



floated across the ages from the misty hills of Gallilee^ — 
would have sufficed. 

But the words had grown dim in the fogs of theology. 

Are they clear today? 

There was really a great deal of sympathy in the 
community for those who had met with casualties. 

They had so many friends — and fellow sufferers, 
that there grew up in that society a sentiment of Bohemia, 
— a loosely defined order of outlaws that mingled in the 
daily, life around them. 

It was something like the Bohemia Robin Hood and 
his merry-men found in the oaklands of Sherwood forest. 

Robin's rurals had also been caught at deer stealing. 

It is not always a help to make laws and grow cus- 
toms that strike at results instead of causes. 

Build dykes and dams as you will, — the Mississippi 
will break onward to the Gulf. Nature's flood goes on to 
the ocean of posterity. 

These accidents were often the result of sincere af- 
fection blended with discouraging poverty. 

The immaculate — and those who claimed to be — 
were as usual loudest in condemning. 

Bohemians are found from one cause or another in 
all the walks of life. 

John Boyle O' Reily wrote — 

"I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any 

other land ; 
For only there are the values true, 
And the laurels gathered in all men's 

view. 
Oh, I long for the glow of a kindly heart, 

and the grasp of a friendly hand, 
And I'd rather live in Bohemia than in 

any other land." 

34 : 



It was tlie natural thing that Robert Burns with his 
genial nature — his talents and social qualities, — should 
drift to this border land. 

Circumstances helped to get him there. 

A young woman was working as a servant in his 
father's family. Little is known of her, except that she 
was somewhat masculine in nature, — a person able to take 
care of herself. There was no love aflfair, but trouble 
came. Rob was half to blame — no more. 

We can see now what a real man did under such cir- 
cumstances. 

Burns took the little girl baby — claimed her openly 
as his daughter, and had her brought up in the family 
with his mother, and his brothers and sisters. (His father 
was then dead.) 

He loved her with a father's love, and gave her a 
good education with his other children. She grew up a 
good woman and married well. He was much attached to 
her from infancy, and shelo him. 

He had to stand up in church and be rebuked by the 
Rev. William Auld. This was the famous "Daddie 
Auld." He was exceptionally gifted with zeal, and could 
repent fervently — of other people's sins. 

When he had the cork out of a bottle of whiskey, the 
liquor never got much older. To be good collateral for 
him, it had to be a sight draft without the three days 
grace. 

Burns was roasted on both sides by church and com- 
munity. But this farm boy — then v^^ithout money or prop- 
erty — would not disown his little natural daughter. 

This was the child he called his : — 

"Sonsie smirking dear bought Bess." 
"His "Bonny sweet wee lady." 

35 



That means his jolly luckie smiling Bess. 

When they teased him "In country clatter," — he 
wrote a poem of welcome to her. This poem has been 
fiercely criticised, and is supposed to show what a bad 
man Burns was. 

Read it ! Read it with an open heart, and vision un- 
clouded by the prejudice and conventionality of this age, 
or of a little island planet — in a provincial solar system. 

While it is witty, — it is deep with genuine feeling, 
and pledged to the little one a father's care and affection. 

This was no empty sentiment of a witful rhymer. 
The little Bess never failed of that father's love and care 
until the toiling hand that penned the poem fell cold and 
listless from the clasp of Death. 

And the bright cheery song! It is worth more to 
humanity than all the soul-smart that was ever ladled over 
a broken hearted girl : — posed on a stool before the con- 
gregation for the edification of the saints : — then crushed 
like a mountain daisy under the plowshare of cant. 

Today people rail at Burns and prate of the moral 
laxity of brave old rural Scotland. 

But can our generation fan with the white wings of 
the immaculate? 

Where lies now the Bohemian hover where lusty 
youth and buxom beauty dally ? 

Look on the back seats of automobiles parked along 
the country roads at night — that is, — if you can locate 
them with the glims doused. 

Ask the Old Boy in the moon : — he who peers from 
the dim disk that rims young Luna's crescent. 

Long ago he spied down on the banks of Ayr. Now 
he is grinning wiser wrinkles into his ancient mug. 

In founding hospitals and orphan asylums, Henry 
Ford wil be known as the Father of his country. 

36 



Later when Burns was about twenty-six years old, he 
fell genuinely in love with a Scotch lassie — Jean Armour, 
— the "Bonny Jean'' of his songs. 

Her father was a well to do man who would not lis- 
ten to their marriage. Burns was then poor, and the girl 
did not care to bolt her family platform. 

But they were much together, and soon a cloud 
loomed on the horizon. It looked as if Burns might have 
to write another nursery rhyme — and he did. 

The young people drew up a written document of 
marriage and both signed it. 

Eminent Scotch and English lawyers who have ex- 
amined this writing, have pronounced it a valid marriage. 

The cloiTd burst was twins. 

Jean Amour's father was a stern Scotch parent. He 
would not accept a marriage between his daughter and a 
yokel like Burns. 

He coerced his daughter. She gave him the marriage 
paper and he destroyed the signatures. He supposed this 
would render the document invalid. Then he had a war- 
rant issued for Bobby. 

Now a contract cannot be canceled except by the con- 
sent of both parties. A marriage contract cannot be set 
aside except b)^ the arm of a court. The destruction of 
documents only makes proof more difficult. 

It shows how lightly such matters were regarded in 
that Scotch community, when the father thought his 
daughter's reputation was not sufficiently at stake to make 
it expedient for her to be married to the father of her 
children. 

Burns had no trade — no business. He had little 
Sonsie Bess to support. His father was dead. He was 
helping to care for his mother, and to educate his sisters. 

2>7 



But he was willing to do anything to support his fam- 
ily and wished the marriage made public. 

The Armour family forbad him the house, and 
turned him from the door. The girl sided with her family 
and repudiated her husband. 

This seems to have been the most trying time of his 
life. All the world was against him. He was the spot- 
light target for the fun-mongers : — especially on account 
of the former escapade and the catch of twins. 

The law, and the gospel — and the society reporters 
were keen on his trail. 

He wrote the poem called the ''Lament." It is full of 
sadness and distraction. In it among other things, he 
grieves because he is an outcast from his twin babies. 

As a despairing resort he decided to sail for Jamacia, 
and try to make his fortune. But in order to sail he must 
have a passport. In it he must be described either as a 
married man or a bachelor. 

If the notary had asked him if he was married or 
singled, — Burns must have answered, — Yes sir I am. 

The authorities decided he could have a bachelor's 
passport if he would stand up in church and be "ad- 
momshed." 

Perhaps they thought another wigging would cure 
Burns of falling in love. 

Here he was : — married by the laws of nature : — mar- 
ried by the law of Scotland : — married by the ties of off- 
spring. Yet he was refused a way to make a living, and 
a providence for those dependent upon him except by dis- 
owning his marriage. 

Deserted by his wife — poor and friendless — he de- 
cided to stand up ; and had to do it seven times before the 
unction of Daddie Auld was exhausted. 

38 



His Reverence played the Devil's game and hauled 
Burns over the glowing coals by his hair. 

We can see an ignoble plow-boy standing in the Ayr- 
shire church that far-off day. 

We can hear the anathemas of the bigot — who knew 
he was married; — yet was willing to part him from the 
rocker where his babies crooned. 

And the social martyr — standing in the bear-garden 
— winked at by friends, and gloated over by Basilisk san- 
ctimony : — was Robert Burns — the poet the English lands 
have crowned with laurel of liberty and song. 

Beyond the seas lay the Indian Isle, — where the lover 
of liberty — who loved his native hills of Scotland, and the 
near ones of his they nestled — must live an exile and a 
slave driver. 

And Daddie Auld was pronouncing the farewell ora- 
tion of Scotland to Robert Burns — the maledictory. 

But Bobby got even later on. The Domine found 
that his congregation were much interested in admoni- 
tions writen in rhyme, — and there didn't seem to be any 
strike on, that was making hot coals scarce. 

Before it was time to sail, Burn's publishers succeed- 
ed in launching an edition of his poems, and he received 
money enough to relieve his present embarrassment. 

While he was thus left alone, he became acquainted 
with Mary Campbell — Highland Mary. 

They were promised in marriage. 

Soon she was stricken with a fever and died. 

Her story and the poems Burns wrote about her, will 
haunt the years with the lyric pathos that lingers round 
the hawthorn glens. 



39 



"Ye banks and braes and streams around 

The castle o' Montgomery 
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 

Your waters never drumlie : 
There Simmer first unfalds her robes, 

And there the langest tarry ; 
For there I took the last Fareweel 

O' my sweet Highland Mary. 

"Plow sweetly bloom'd the gay, green birk. 

How rich the hawthorn's blossom. 
As underneath their fragrant shade, 

I clasp'd her to my boosm 
The golden Hours on angel wings. 

Flew o'er me and my Dearie ; 
For dear to me, as light and Hfe, 

Was my sweet Highland Mary. 

"Wi' mony a vow, and lock'd embrace. 

Our parting was f u' tender : 
And, pledging aft to meet again. 

We tore oursels asunder ; 
But oh fell Death's untimely frost. 

That nipt my Flower sae early. 
Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay, 

That wraps my Highland Mary. 

"O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, 

I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly 
And clos'd for ay, the sparkling glance 

That dwelt on me sae kindly 
And mouldering now in silent dust. 

That heart that lo'ed me dearly 
But still within my bosom's core 

Shall live my Highland Mary." 

40 



Afterwards Robert and Jean became reconciled and 
lived together until his death. But this did not come with- 
out bickerings, and until Jean was practically deserted by 
her friends. 

The story that they settled this trouble by an after 
marriage is not true. They were never married again. 
It was not necessary. They made a public acknowledge- 
ment of the written marriage, and this has been fixed up 
into a story, — but it is only a fable of biography. 

Their life for the most part was a happy one. He 
wrote not less than seventeen different poems to his Bon- 
ny Jean. Allusions to her are found in many a glowing 
line. 

When he wrote his songs, she sang the airs and tried 
the tunes until he was satisfied he had done his best. 

Was it strange the independent nature of Robert 
Burns made him chief in Bohemia? 

Was it strange that he trimmed up the apostles of 
devilology ? 

The Scotch Robin loosed his minstrel long-bow, and 
the shafts of raillery whistled their merry tunes into the 
living targets. 

How their harp-twang stings down the wind of 
story! 

Like Percy's bow-boy in the ballad of Chevy 
Chase : — 

"An Arrow of a clothyard long 

Up to the head drew he. 

Against Sir Hugh Montgomerye 

So right the shaft he set, 

The white swan-wing that was ther'eon 

Was in his heart's blood wet." 

41 i 



Afterwards he was appointed a giiager of liquors, 
and travelled round the different parishes in his district. 

When he was about twenty-seven years old his busi- 
ness took him often to Dumfries, and he was much at the 
Globe Tavern. 

There seems to have been a temporary misunder- 
standing between Burns and Jean at this time. Nobody 
explains it. Certainly not the biographers with their sur- 
mises. 

Burns became acquainted with Ann Park — neice of 
the landlady of the Globe. She was bar maid and wait- 
ress at the tavern, and the "Anna of the Golden Locks," — 
no artless lass of Arcady. 

Another casualty resulted — Burns' daughter Eliza- 
beth. 

This was in some way arranged in the family. The 
child was taken to the Burns home. Jean laid it in the 
same cradle with a little stranger of her own that had just 
discovered Ayr Shire. 

Her old father came to see her, and seeing two in the 
crib asked if twins had come again. Jean told him one 
was a neighbor's child and its mother was sick. ("It's a 
neebor's bairn who is unweel.") This was the exact truth. 

Jean deserved the red cross medal — "For distin- 
guished service — in time of war." Some married ladies 
would have been fussy. But her experience had taught 
her the kindly credo of Bohemia. She became much at- 
tached to the child. 

The cradle song of Bonny Jean must have floated 
down to her mother heart from some star with kinder 
skies than ours. 

This child like the other was brought up and educat- 
ed with the children of the family. Rob and Jean were 

42 



both good fellows and ran their own family. Biograph- 
ers and other folks had better leave it to them. 

Of course a rhyme went with the occasion. Some 
people think it the worst of Burns. 

The passion song to Anna is shell-shock to the Whit- 
tier school. But it sings like the goose-wing arrow over 
the Scotch and English lands. 

When it is clipped from the scroll of Burns, the same 
committee of censors will burn the Odes of Horace and 
the roundelays of Beranger. They will cremate whole 
scenes of Shakesphere, and several naughty poems of Ella 
Wheeler Wilcox. Walt Whitman and Billy Sunday will 
be caught in the altogether and barbecued. 

Also the Song of Solomon may have to go in the dis- 
card. 

The Creator made many races of animals on the pla- 
net ploygamous, — so they could be fruitful and multiply 
and replenish the earth. Ours is one of them. 

We have not come like the trees that Tennyson 
says : — 

"But languidly adjust 
Their vapid vegitable loves 
With anthers and with dust." 

The race is not surviving today through stock-farm 
eugenics. The red heart-wave of Cro-Magnon cave man 
has borne it on. 

"Almost everybody is an accident." 

The child of Anna of the Norseland hair made a 
good woman. She married and her descendants are said 
to transmit the strain of Burns with more prepotence than 
those of his other children. 

43 



Where is the posterity of Whittier? 
Anthers and pollen failed to register the blood-pres- 
sure of Scotland and Burns. 

This Scotch Bohemia was real to the Bohemians who 
lived by the banks of Ayr. 

Many a man has stood fair before the world because 
he wasn't caught, — and perhaps had money and influence. 
Many another escapes who deserted mother and child, — 
or perhaps sent the innocent down the dark way of the un- 
born. 

The life of Burns was not the story of pathos and 
dispair that Carlyle and some of the others, go into tribu- 
lations over. 

Ups and downs he had like other men. But on the 
whole he took life as a cheery stunt. He was a bright 
companion and a sincere friend. 

Like other bright spirits he was at times dispondent. 

It is not a sad Burns: — but the gloomy sphinx of 
Carlyle — couchant on the desert sands — that spreads the 
shadow. 

Carlyle's essay is a dreary dirge keyed to the sub-bass 
of a church organ. From beginning to end there is not a 
flick of a smile — not a patch of sunshine on the heather. 

All must feel sad at the poverty and distress that 
came upon Bums at the end of his life. 

He had helped his mother, and helped his sisters. He 
prided himself on the appearance of his own family and 
kept his wife and children well dressed. He had loaned 
money to his brother that he badly needed, — equal to 
abou $8,000.00 now. It could not be returned. 

44 



They made him keeper of the vineyards, but his own 
vineyard did he not keep. 

The story that his sickness and death were caused by 
a night exposure after a drunken spree is not true. 

But he died in financial distress. A warrant was 
out for him. Imprisonment for debt was then legal. 

He worried about his family. His last child was born 
during his funeral. 

Burn's mind was broad and liberal not only for his 
times but for all times. 

He did not believe in the theolog}' of the church, but 
he respected sincere religion, and had faith in immortality. 

He was not the kind of reformer that plans with 
malice aforethought to uplift the world. He left that to 
Atlas and the others who feel so much responsibility 
about it. He was not a meddler. 

While he had no sympathy with the intolerant in- 
stitution of the Covenanters, and had suffered from it, — 
he could do them justice. 

With all their grim intolerance, the Covenanters had 
been the apostles of Scotland's liberty. They had stayed 
the tyranny of the feudal barons. 

Burns knew his country's history and respected them. 

When he heard the Covenant slurred he wrote these 
lines : — 

"The solemn league and Covenant 
Cost Scotland blood — cost Scotland tears; 
But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause — 
If thou'rt a slave, indulge they sneers." 

45 



Burns was the poet of womanhood. His touch on tlie 
lute strings runs from Bonny Mary on the hillside — the 
queen of a cottage — to lovely Queen Mary in the halls of 
Holyrood. 

A white neck was laid under England's axe. An 
impassioned and beautiful face shines starlike through the 
song and the story of Scotland : — even as the Grecian 
Helen's through the song of Troy. And Marie Steuart is 
mourned in no sweeter requiem than the one the plow-boy 
wrote. 

He loved nature and birds and the animals. 

Here of course should slide in — the beatified legend 
of Orpheus — Ancient of the tale-spinner's biography 
yarns. 

After their other fables, — it is easy to believe that the 
•wild-folk went a-dreaming to his ukelele like dough-boys 
to the mess bugle. 

Pied piper's piccolo and chuck-horn solo, play but a 
stolen stave from the old sorcery harp : — the mess call to 
a feasting in the promised land. 

Echo-drift from the load-star lyre of Orpheus must 
have spilled around the hills of Scotland. For if Robert 
Bums saw a wounded hare limp by, or a bashful grass- 
mouse, he made them his comrades and ours. 

We were all poets in our youth, but as we grow up 
we get ashamed of the poetry in our natures. 

A man might as well be ashamed of his grandmother 
who was the loving friend of his childhood. For it is 
Nature — the olden mother that whispers. 

The real poets are the listeners : — they who cherished 
the early dreams and longings, and let them grow, and 

46 



wove them into language in the effort to translate them 
for us. 

They are castaways from some far-ofif planet — ship- 
wrecked on our wild shore. They know their native home 
is in the distant sun-land — out among the ranges of the 
great telescopes. But when they tell us of it, we listen to 
the music and mock the soul-beats of the singer. 

Robert Burns died on the 21st day of July, 1796 at 
the age of about thirty-seven and one-half years. 

Never lived a master-singer so frank and brave. 

He would not shirk the consequences of his faults. 
Instead of hiding his mistakes, he openly did his level best 
to right them. 

Since the lyric heart of Scotland stilled, the mountain 
daisies have crimsoned the hills for more than a hundred 
springtimes. And the Burns memorial is not yet written. 
His poems have reached only the nearest of the audience. 

But from clouds that never floated, the reeling larks 
— like Bonny Jeans — will lilt his tunes; — and the river's 
immemorial organ tell the idyls to the ocean. 

Down the generations yet to live — rich and poor — 
dweller in the city, and Lincoln boy in the wilderness — 
lover and hero and sweetheart, — will know the revel of 
his song. 

The absent lover will send his girl a copy of "My 
Nannie's a'wa," for a Valentine. 

She will send him back— "O Whistle and Fie come 
to You My Lad." 

He whose reverie quests the lost love of his youth — 
gone beyond a wider stream than flowed around Mont- 
gomery — will dream of Highland Mary. 

He who toils in hardship will read : — 

"The rank is but the guinea stamp 
The man's the gowd for a' that." 
47 



The future holds in mystic hush the music for John 
Andersons not started up the hill; — and even the unsung 
memory of us is there in "Auld Lang Syne." 

As the world runs on, and younger Scotlands rise on 
Scotland — like the white crags of Ben Lomond: — they 
shall never blush for the minstrel boy of their native land. 

Robert Burns will blow the lowland Pan-pipes down 
the ages. 

And on in sun-lit Maydays we shall never ken: — a 
man shall be a man, and a woman a woman, for all that. 

00 

THE END 

00 



48 



COLONEL WESTNEDGE 

From "The Kalamazoo Herald" of 
Dec. 19, 1918. 



Colonel Joseph B. Westnedge died at an army hospi- 
tal at Nantes — in the old provence of France that was 
Brittany— November 29th, 1918. 

So runs the message sent across the sea that told the 
ending of his bright heroic story. 

The trumpets had sounded, "Cease Firing," along 
the battle lines of France. His friends were already mak- 
ing plans as to what they would do to, "Jo", when he 
reached home. Then from out the clouds — the bugler 
of the innumerable legions blew for him, the call, — "Lie 
Down." 

He was the ideal type of the American volunteer — 
the citizen soldier. 

His military experience began in Company C — the 
Kalamazoo unit of the old 2nd Infantry of the Michigan 
National Guard. 

For years the National Guard worked against dis- 
couragement. But it was the organization that kept alive 
the army spirit through the long night of American un- 
preparedness. 

The people had settled down to the belief that we 
should never have another war: — or if we did, the navy 
would take care of it in a few weeks — so what was the 
use of military outfits in time of peace? 

49 



One of the Guard problems was, — how a youngster 
could master the complicated profession of the modern 
soldier, and still be a citizen and succeed in his daily busi- 
ness. 

Surely it took the up-hearted spirit of the soldier, and 
the patriotism that must be a part of good citizenship to 
carry-on both at the same time. 

He took great interest in the Armory Building, and 
the fittings for the local companies. 

At the time the troops left home, his own name and 
those of several of our local officers were on paper at the 
bank for moneys borrowed for the Armory fund. 

These notes amounted to about five thousand dollars. 
They have since been paid by public donations. 

When the Spanish-American war came, — the thought 
that drew the people on, was finer than the watchword, — 
"Remember the Maine." The medieval curse of Castile 
was brooding over Cuba. Spain showed the same cruel 
disregard for human wrong and suffering that has marked 
the German invasions. 

When President McKinley called for volunteers, the 
regiment went to Island Lake to. muster in for the war. 
This was a little more than twenty years ago. Jo W^est- 
nedge was then a lieutenant in Company C. 

Another, "To", — Jo Nolan, — was its captain. He too 
was an ideal officer — loved by his men and considered of 
promise by his superiors. His ambition and his whole 
heart was in his work. But that boy soldier's heart ! At 
his physical examination the surgeons found that even 
then its beats were almost numbered. 

Nolan soon passed away. After the examination he 
came to my tent, and choked when he told me he was not 
to go. The disappointment probably hastened the end. 

50 



I asked him who would be Captain of C. He said, — 
"The other Jo,— Company C. will be all right." 

So Captain Westnedge had the experience of serving 
through the Spanish-American as a company commander. 

An officer who takes a higher rank without this epi- 
sode is handicapped. The company is the real unit of the 
service, — and at times may be a little army of itself. 

Its commander is brought in touch with the men. He 
knows their wants and troubles — their easily besetting — 
faults : — for even a good soldier can at times be a good 
sinner, A company officer learns to understand the hu- 
man nature of soldiers, and finds out their way of look- 
ing at things. 

Without this experience — and without the kindly 
sympathy which was part of the Joe Westnedge make-up 
— an officer cannot be a real leader. 

He served with his company until mustered out at 
the end of the war. By common consent he was a credit 
to the service; and his work had the warm approval of 
superior officers. 

At the close of the Spanish-American war he stayed 
with the Michigan organization of the regiment, and rose 
to be its Lieutenant Colonel. 

When the National Guard was again called out of 
the state, it was for service on the Mexican border. 

Again with the old company, he was on active service 
with the old regiment, and became its Colonel. 

No one dreamed how soon the training he gave it, 
would be tested in the greatest world war. 

When the storm broke, — it found him ready with the 
outfit. 

The boys who walked our streets in the heyday of 
Jyouth were soon to rival in story the armies gray with 

51 



legend — ^those that since the dawn of history have fought 
over the fields of France. 

The accounts we have of Colonel Westnedge from 
the time he landed with them — "Over There" — show him 
with the regiment he had carefully and ably coached. 

How well he did his work, is told by the fact that 
when his command was enlarged to the foreign service 
limit, he was retained as colonel. It was selected from 
the greatest army the United States ever mustered, as one 
of the units of its flower guard. 

A man may be a good officer — faithful and careful 
in the discharge of his duties : — but the final test of the 
soldier that includes all others, must be, — is he a com- 
manding officer in presence of the enemy ? 

This test he seems to have met — not only with the 
record of well done, — but with distinguished courage and 
ability. Those who were with the regiment when its 
cradle was rocked, must always cherish with mournful 
pride this memory. When those supreme hours of ad- 
venture came, — it was led by a soldier who had grown 
up with it : — by one who has placed it with the regiments 
from the time of the revolution on, that have marked the 
color lines of American history. 

Still young, — he was old enough for developed judg- 
ment. Grant was forty-two when Lee surrendered. 
Colonel Westnedge was forty-six at the end. 

A military officer is not made in a day. He had been 
training for about twenty-five years. 

Citizen soldier of two wars for ideals: — he lived to 
see the lone star of the Indies float from a liberty mast; 
and heard the chimes of victory play from belfries that 
had grieved for Lafayette. 

In the heart of his country his laurels are safe. 

52 



Among his old friends and comrades there goes with 
the wreath, a feeling of personal loss — a sensing that the 
spirit passed on is rarely equaled — the genial kindly spirit 
of Jo Westnedge. 

Poor and hollow would be the words we murmur 
above his lowly head, if we could only echo that he had 
been a skillful officer. 

We can go beyond that, and feel rather than speak — 
a tribute to his manly worth and his kindly human sym- 
pathy. 

The men in his regiment were to him his soldier 
brothers, with whom he would gladly live, and if need be 
gladly die. 

They had no danger to face on the firing line their 
Colonel would not share: — no trouble he would not try 
to make lighter : — no hardship in which he would not bear 
his part. 

To his immediate family there is little we can say, 
except to tell them our sympathy is deeper than the touch 
of language, — and that the sunset shadows fall eastward 
to the morning. 

He sleeps in the ancient cathedral city where King 
Henry signed the famous Edict of Nantes, that gave free- 
dom to the Hugenots. It is in a land where the last 
crusaders of liberty have written an ampler edict that 
makes men and women free. 

The signets to the charter are ruddy drops from 
warm brave hearts. Opposite one of them is written the 
name — Westnedge of Kalamazoo. 

In Memorial Mays whose bloomage we shall never 
wreathe, — garland and song and the messenger of elo- 
quence will not let it fade. 

By the banks of the Loire there is a green mound the 
reverie of Michigan haunts. There the minstrel winds of 

53 



Brittany sing the requiem of Nature — the infinite mother. 
When they journey onward, — it changes to a new song 
of the people's hope. 

We hear that Company C, is shattered. Many others 
from Kalamazoo sleep in the vineyard land. 

And some have come home to their rest. 

Twenty-three centuries ago, Pericles stood over his 
country's dead in a garden of Athens and said : — 

"Youth perished from the city like spring from the 
year," and, — "Immortality belongs to those who die in the 
service of their country." 

They may camp with Lafayette and Westnedge : — or 
in grassy mounded arbors of their native land. The same 
benediction of the sunset hallows the oaken cross beyond 
the Atlantic, — and tides homeward with the dial till it 
nestles on the Westland marble. Its farewell glimmer 
on the lowly barrows is an earnest of the flushing dawn 
on eternal highlands. 



NOTE. 

Colonel Irish served twelve years with the 2nd In- 
fantry of the Michigan National Guard — five years as 
Captain of Company C ; and betxVeen five and six years 
as Colonel of the regiment. He was not with it in the 
Spanish- American : — but went out as Colonel of the 35th 
Michigan, — a volunteer regiment which he organized to 
fill out the state quota, after the National Guard had all 
gone in. Editor Herald. 



54 



WAITING FOR A SAIL 

Attention of Our Inter-ocean Post Boy, 

She stands on the roof 

and peers for a sail. 
But the mist on the tide 

is gray Hke a veil ; 
And the wings of the boat 

never float in. the haze 
To joyance the eyes 

that grow dim with the days. 

Can you guess the rare cargo 

that lags on the brine ? 
It is made up of gold 

from a story-old mine ; 
And the more of the ore 

that goes cruising away, — 
All the more will be left 

for a sunnier day. 

For the bark with white sails 

and the lingering spars — 
That is steered from its port 

by the mystery stars, — 
Bears a message of fate 

becalmed in the mail. 
And so she must wistfully 

wait for a sail. 

55 



THE MAINE 

By the marge of the dusky Antilles 
Our ship was a-swing on the wave. 

On the breasts of its sailors the lilies 
Gleam white as they garland the brave. 

* 

In Spain's mystic port of Havana, 
A blink of the sun's dimming light 

Caressed the last tinge of the banner 
While bugles were lilting good night. 

The star's that shone white in the glooming 
Were black ere the refrain of dawn ; 

And the spell of the mariner's dooming 
Had silenced the tune of the horn. 

The crew to the cloud-lands were sailing; 

And sweet haunting eyes on the pier 
The barques of the dreamers seemed hailing, 

As home to their slumber drew near. 

Then a red ocean Etna uprending. 
Made flame of the battleship's prid?; 

And the sea-raging dragon was sending 
The Blues with a toss on the tide. 



* 



The dead sailors found after the wreck were buried 
on the Island, — and the Cubans draped the mounds with 
lilies. 

56 



They were sailors a-cruise with the thunder; 

The lads who could make the old flasr 
To far briny portals, a wonder 

That heralds more cannon than brag. 

In the smoke of the battle guns chiding 
We knew that their hearts would be leal ; 

But a mad lurking devil was hiding 
Deep down by the Ironclad's keel. 

A breeze of the ocean eternal 

Round haven-slung hammocks a-hum ! — 
The rend of the powder infernal ! 

The gunners at anchor-watch dumb ! 

O, brave were the dreams of the sailor 
Who rocked in the mystery boat: — 

For who was the powder imp's jailor 
To tell him how long it would float. 

They sleep by the bright island surges: — 
We grieve with the gulf's moaning dirges; 

And pluck with impassioned emotion 
For mariners dead with the "Maine" — 

For our exiles a-cold in the ocean — 
The red thorny roses of pain. 

The lilies of Castile are fading 

On mounds by the Indies' strand ; 
And the fragrance of memory lading 

The winds of their fond native land. 
The stars that charm sweetly above them 

Beguile their long dream by the sea. 
May a flag with a lone star to love them 

Float over an Isle of the Free. 
April, 1898. 

57 



NAP IN THE SADDLE 

SCENE I A lake-side resort. Time morning. 

An English girl in cross-seat riding habit, 
waits for the saddle horses. The groom is late. 
She sits down in a hammock and carefully 
pulls the skirt of her riding coat over a fresh 
tear in the trousers. 

She drops asleep. It is the morning after 
the country mask-ball, and she was up late last 
night. Her hair falls down and at times is lift- 
ed on the breeze. 

A small brook runs through the grove. 
Across it, her brindle bull-terrier has treed a 
squirrel. Other wag-tails are stricken with 
acute ecstasy. In vain the lady boarders shout 
the recall at them. 

Some of the boys are yelling, — "Sic I'm 
Tri.v!" Bare-footed they splash through the 
stream and race for the tree. Several little 
pigs are scared ahead, and scurry in yapulant 
panic. 

The Bolsheviki mob about the tree refuse 
to listen to reason — from female politicans. 

The squirrels up the other trees — vo-zip- 
perate. 

There is a wooded turn in the near-by 
road, and the auto horns challenge it with long 
and short signals. 

From the stables, the blooded Kentuck 
nickers a cheery solo — on his oaten Pan pipe. 

58 



An impertinent rooster on the fence mocks 
its echo. 

From boughs above the cradle — an astral 
Puckrell winks, and drips the poppy sap. 

A mortal wag — in spurs and khaki — 
steals up and gently sways the net. 

A young lady sitting near, sings in a low 
sweet voice, — 

"By Baby Bunting — 

Daddy's gone a-htmting." 
And,— 

"Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top." 

A yoimgster strums support on a banjo, 
and varies with rag-time, and the rocking 
is cadenced to the tunes. 

The blonde naps on : — but now a peachy 
wine brims tingent in her cheek. 

Her left hand clutches a mesh of the 
swing with a nervous jerk. A murmur plays 
on the sleeping lips. A sensitive ear — for mu- 
sic — might catch a piccolo octave — followed by 
— "Trix! Go home!" 

A small black spider darts over her 
fingers. The thumb turns up and points for- 
ward between the ears — of the hammock. 

She now holds the hemp with a caress — 
as if it were a rubber cord to be relaxed or 
pulled. 

PROLOGUE 
She tips, and on her lips the pranky smiles 
Half blab how wily Mab a dream beguiles. 
The Queenie flicks unseen the hammock nag. 
The colt that trots no jolt, shall quest the stag; 

59 



And Trix in winks his flixy tail shall wag. 
Now mad-folk — down a glad ancestral trance — 
With lurking Puck — come perking dim romance. 
In yore-land woods the boar-hunt riders go. 
In luck at view, the buck-hounds jump the roe. 
And back to olden-time more packs may rail : — 
AVhile larking in the dream, a hark-horn hail 
Lures on — where vision hunters lose the trail. 



THE DREAM 

Fleethart — ranger of the wild — 
What rolling lasso hoop 

Your war)'^ feet beguiled? 

The shooting loop 
Has snared you in its droop 

No colt from Arab desert well : — 

Or Old-Kentucky Dixies : — 
For silver cup or golden spell 

Can pool with Barb of Pixies. 

A witch'es plug will rear on air 
And mop the Bureau weather. 

1 know that at a fancy scare — 
(And sometijnes at a country fair) — 

Old Peg will clear the heather. 
But who had guessed Your Nervy Grace 

Was sprung from Goblin-bred eternals- 
Of gamy heart and foxy pace — 
That range Endymion's vernals? 
(A fly flew on his ear — 
My hand feels creepy queer,) 

60 



No throbbing hoof-beats stir my seat: — 

Like a wolf the pathway traiHng, — 
Where fall the white and wingy feet 
That fan along this sailing. 
(His gallop tricks so pat and true, — 
This horse seems fit to carr}' two. 
(They'd have to hug 
And sit up snug.) 

The wind that frets my streaming hair, 

A liossy mane carresses, 
I know not where I go nor care — 

So light the bridle presses. 
And now — down Sherwood's forest trail 

The n.iddy dawn is sliding: — 
While winds the Saxon bugle scale, 

And tonic hounds are chiding. 
Afar at first the echo, 
But now it seems to beck — O 

A-like a hope in hiding. 

The rouse wakes up the quarry's lair. 

My veins with vintage jingle: — 
Could a girl this revel dare. — 

And its run through gulch and dingle? 
Are those the wild boar's yawling shrills 

With the hounding yaps a-mingle? 
They buzz my nerve like dental drills — 
When the spin jumps on with a tingle, 
I hear the glen maids scream 
I/ike scares on lips that dream. 
He's the Bug of the jungles 
If the slot-bitch bunsfles. 



61 



At pealing horn and forest cries, — 
How high my horse is bounding: — 

While kindle keen his wide-set eyes — 
Turned where the hunt is sounding! 

What bright haired queen beside me goes? 

Ah Elgiva — loved in story ! 
But no — a plate-glass window shows 

My shadow crowned with Saxon glory ! 

And yet it seems not strange to me .^^ 
For plate-glass panel's dark reffector 

To gleam by vSherwood's linden tree, 
And trick my double for a spectre. 

Or was it Eve-wise Dryad 
In boot and — checks attired? 
(I guess she tripped — 
Her — things are ripped.) 

I heard the tree-girl's song 
As I rode along. 
Her Druid croon- 
W^as some sweet tune 
From the homing soul 
In a sea-shell's bowl. 
From the world apart 
It melts my heart ; 
And glims with glamourie 
A misty memorie. 

Now through the oaks 
With hob-nob jokes 
And rollic shout 

62 



Jinks on the rout. 

And in the lead — they cheer 

A flash of fear. 

The buck-hound's zip 

Its heels may nip. 
I hear the jets from bugles keen. 

I see the sheen 

Of Lincoln green — 
And in that larky picinic party 
Rides one who spurs in khaki. 
There a-thwart the hawthorne cover 
See the hurdle jumpers hover — 
And here and there the scarlet kindle — 
And far in front — a dog of hrindle! 

His flutty wag 
Is the guidon flag, — 
Or the plume of Navarre 
That shines like a star. 
If he trees that pig 
He may be wiser, 
And get a twig — 
As did Tricks Kaiser, — 
That H. C. L. 
Is fierce in ham. 
And he'l catch — 
(A rhyme for L.) 
But he won't give a — 
(Rhyme for ham.) 
And like the twinkling Procyon — 
In Stella lore, 
The canis minor 
That goes before 
Orion's big-dog shiner — 

63 



He'l hunt anon — the sky on. 
And be a good dog gone. 

Jim Abbot raised the pup. 

At shows they take the cup. 

O never! Trix won't bite! 

No— he don't get tight. 

He frisked my — togs last night. 

Of course he barks at cats : — 

He found them on a chair 

And shook the pair, 
And tore that tear. 

But then he's zeal on rats. 
My tunic spats — 
And shows the hole — 

(I almost said — Sheol !) 

He nips at Fleethart's heels — 

Until I squirm like eels, 

And let out squeals. 

And if I send him back — 

He's sure to loop my track. 
I stayed with Jim 
So late to dance — 
Trix took the whim 
To rip my — O figs! — 
His Jigs to — Prance! 
FTe plays till he pants. 
I wouldn't care 
If I had another pair. 
O I can swim, 
But I like Jim :— 
And so I let him. dream 
He's teaching me the stream. 

64 



The woods grow dim — 
I cannot swim — 
O Jim ! 

SCENE II The spider imp comes back. She is an old 
and cunning dame with Xey eyes that leer the 
brain. She sHdes along the sleeping face. 

The branches over-head shake with a puff of 
Eurus. 

Some drops of morning dew spray down 
as fell the Lethe Lull on Palinurus. 

Trix has caught the squirrel! 
There is a victory jubilee. 

ON WITH THE TRANCE! 

That fly is a freak 
It nipped my cheek. 
The dogs are off the peep 
Of the wild-heel's leap. 

They run in laps 

With silly yaps. 
The gay shirt frills 
From the bal-masque rills, 
Dance waltz quadrills 
That swim on the hills. 
The horse that jolts the boar 
Falls down on the ball-room floor. 
I catch no step, in the riddles 

The Cremona fiddles 

Of the wood-bands fling. 

But the belling swells 

65 



The viol's ring 
On the catgut rack — 
Hark-on the wildered pack. 

Along the screen the movies glimpse. 
I see the wet grass brim 
And the glancing spiders skim — 
And the girls who dance with Jim. 

There's pert old Mab — the Queen of Imps;- 

And a whelp gets gored and limps. 

It's lady's choice : 
They'v caught their boys. 
Those horrid flirts 
In the two-step glance. 
There's Jim zvith Nance 
And I can't dance — 
For I tore my — skirts. 

The jump-hounds have no sniff. 
The slow-dogs trail a whiff. 
So now the leash-boy slips 
Old Meg — for witch-nose tips. 
No chance for her to flunk it. 
She'd smell the dens 
Of the moonshine pens — 
In Tunkett. 
Old Meg would nose for a peg — 
And find a keg 
Where Nick's own spell 
In — (I won't tell.) — had sunk it. 

She nags cold reek 
Of the tricl<y freak 

66 



In the fenland ruck; — 
And she's good for the spoil 
Down the still-hunt foil 
To the — Angel's — truck. 

And Jim I guess — 
Might slip the dream-hound's throng — 

And lip the horn. 

He told me once 

That runaway stunts 

On a blooded racer. 

Were about as sane 

As swiging champagne 

With a whiskey chaser. 

I know he rides a horse, — 

But whence that fond remorse? 

He must suppress 

His canteen thirst 

For moonshine nips — 

When the hammock — rips, 

(He is the worst!) 

It is Dian's pony: — 

It carries two — 

But just to coo. 

And he gets phony 

And shocks my — symphony. 

But after all, — what harm 

To skim the jorum, 

And sip the charm, — 
Just in a dream-rhyme variorum ! 

I ride the swish of the coppice spray — 
In dews that damp the May. 

67 



In their plashy smacks 
They smell sachet — 
Like the rose bouquet 
That was sent by — Max 

Where goes the fresh of the rose 
When its perfume blows? 

Where spent the virile scent 
For the slot forgot. 

Where spoom the muzzles true 

That sift the tainted dew, — 
The cunning — fled 

From the blood-hound dead? 

Where vanish the love-lies 
That float on the masker's lips — 
Where the tide of mad Burgundy dips 
When its undertow slips; — 
And told by coquetry eyes 
\\^ith the wits 
Of the kits 
In the domino slits? 

That jimpy doe 

Is a changling roe. 

For the brown eyes glow 

In the necromancy 

Like the eyes of Nancy; 

And its green shirt waist 

Goes well with her — taste. 

The eerie beaut 

Is playing cute. 

The witch is rich. 

But there lurks in the wood — 

68 



With his bugle sking 

And his bow fresh strung: — 

One Robin Hood. 

Like a ghost he gUdes 

Through the thicket shdes, — 

Lest the king's good shng 

His neck should swing. 

He marks sweet Nancy 

With a goose-wing fancy. 

That nanny roe 

Falls quick for a beau. 

I don't care 

If he shoots a tear — 

Or pinks the minx: — 

For she is the slim 

Who is after Jim. 

If he wants that flirt — 

\\'hy she can have him, — 

And this whole concert. 

His green-shirt spouse 

Could give him a house. 

Along the margent day, 
From onward years I heard a lay, — 
And some strange ukelele play. 

Afar on the horizon 

The dawn-shine 

Smiled surprise on 

A cottage vine ; — 

And then went homing 

Down the gloaming. 
I saw a twilight rush-light glim, — 
And up the path came — J -Jim. 



69 



I hear again the Dryad sing: 
And sweeter falls the hymn. 
She trills some fairy mother-key: — 
Yet strange as dreams to me. 
It thrills afar 
From the Curfew star — 
(On drifting wings.) 
And as the echo sings — 
Its tune like a cradle swings. 

THE LASS OF THE LINDEN. 
(The Tree Maid's Chant.) 

The Linden tree 

Belongs to me. 

I am the soul 

Of the Linden's bole. 

In the sap of its shoot 

My life took root. 

When it dies 

My spirit flies. 
The Linden grew 
In the crimson dew 
By the Dragon's cave — 
Where the hot-heart spill 
Of the gallant knave 
Its roots would fill. 

The Linden high 

Tops in the sky. 

Its bright tides flow ; — 

And its blossoms blow 

In billowy seas 

For the honey bees. 

70 



For a thousand years 

It rocks and cheers. 

In its branches slung 

My hammock hung. 

When the rolHng raft 

In the tempest swung — 

I lay and laughed. 
When the leaguer trumpet blew 
My heart to the Goblin flew — 
That the bandit Siegfried slew. 

The wine of my prime 

Was the juice of the Lime, 

And the tangy flood 

Of the Wyvern's blood. 
The vintage sting 
Of the song I sing — 
To you I bring. 

The spell I drank 

In my bosom sank : — 

Till I knew each tune 

The birds and rivers rune: — 

The storm in the trees : 

The surge of the seas : — 

The wild-tongue's cry 

And the branches sigh. 

The age's chime 

Was my cradle rhyme. 

What it sang to me 

I tell to thee. 

This a song 

Before you are born — 

The voice of the deep 

71 



You shall hear in your sleep. 
You shall come to life 
In a world of strife; — 
And far will you sail 
On the ether gale — 
Storm for your guest ; 
And waves in your rest. 

I am the wave 

From the heart 

Of the Linden brave. 

The boar's mad rave : — 

The bay-hound's stave ; 

And the lark's sweet hymn 

On the morning's rim : — 

Each pipe a note 

Of the song remote: — 

For the deep sends its call 

With the voice of all. 

I am the lass of the Linden — 

Belle of the tree-lands. 

When falls my leafy urn 

On the drift to the lee-lands: — 

The dragon shall turn 

In the storm-foam rack: — 

The tide we shall spurn, — 

And I will fight back. 

Death I fear not: — 

Let it come by age, 

Or the axe-bit rage: — 

The steel and its slash 

No terror can flash. 

If battle shock 

72 



The wood-lands rock, — 
Then my tree and I 
Like the soldier die. 

When the raucous shell 

Through the drift-gas Hell, — 

Went by on its quest 

For the leal of the west, — 

Over the droop 

From the starry troop, 

Did the maid of the Linden stoop. 

And little they knew 

As the gun-bees flew — 

In the forest rue, 

That the cross she wore 

Was red with the shed 

Of a dragon's gore. 

Be longing and brave : — 
The heir-loom of Linden 
Is — fear not the grave. 
Death's brimming bowl 
Is the sap of the lime 
At the top of its climb — 
In a stirrup-cup troll. 
Swage deep with the flagon 
That beads with the dragon : — 
Then gayly ride on. 

Immortal are all 
Your race alQne 
Would black-ball— 
Your kindred that crawl. 
Why give them a stone? 

7Z 



When did you pass 

On the prototype lift — 

Across the morass — 

Over the marge of the mortal? 

Where found you the isolate gift 

Of a spirit-bright garner? 

What made you the only immortal — 

Sending your mother back to Nirvana? 

Fierce is the jungle chase! 

Fierce is your race ! 

The wave of the cave man 

Yet throbs in your clan. 

Know ye that all are immortal 

From prototype up. 

No creature is made 

To sink down in the cup. 

Peace is a lull that is brooding a war ! — 

Peace is a Proteus arming the maskers. 

Equal the justice the eon's allot — 

To the long ago : — to the now ; and the on. 

A world without fight is a poppy-pipe league. 

A dragon — the land of the Lotus would rouse. 

Bludgeon of cave man : — 

Sorcery steel of the Camelot fairy : — 

Roll of brown rifle: — Machine-gun tattoo: — 

Hit the same key on the organ's — where-to? 

Choke-damp of Pandora — a-drift in the dark — 

And the winds of peace are poison ! 

In the reek — hear the fog-bells toll ! 

In the masquerade go czars as saints. 

The sword is the lift of a spirit hope : — 

Its gleam shall not pale round spirals of stars. 



74 



Stately and tall is the Linden — 

Queen of the trees, — 
Wise with the welkin-ken — 

Loved by the wing-sweet bees 

That round it fly. 

Fair and sweet am L 

The cavern blood 

Tints red my bud. 

Each leaf apart 

Is a loyal heart. 
A sprig of the Linden tree 
Shall be your fleur-de-lis : — 

The passion dart 

Of the budding Lime — 
Bright with the Hero's crime. 

Crave not wealth : — 

Revel in health. 
Bend beside the stricken : — 
Try their hearts to quicken. 
Heark to the voicing glees 
That blow from far-off seas. 
The wafts on the ether that bring you- 
Out of the branches that swing you,- 
Tell the old story to trees. 

True is the story of Elfin and Dryad 
The legends romantic have wired. 
On the boom now afloat 
The Dryads shall vote. 
I am your Fairy 
From the tree-top airy. 
My gift is staunch pluck. 
I charm you with luck. 

75 



Here's a deep health to thee — 
In the Dragon's flagon — 
From the Linden tree. 

I could not waltz to that violin : — 
It got me pretty nigh-all-in. 

If she sticks to her tenet 

She'll spout in the senate. 

It wasn't a wind that blew 

Out of a tree in Kalamazoo : — 

For there the votes get whirls 

That dizzy the girls. 

The count is a kid, 

And the ballots are hid 

In a dicing game — 

So they can't take aim. 

They shake the votes 

And roll the goats, — 

Till in Kalamazoo 

The tally-may-skew.' 

Its a moonshine brew — 

Where they skim the stew 

For a bubbling crew 

To blow the — revenue. 

Burr-Oaks are inspired : 

But a Basswood Dryad 

Would chant em' tired. 
She'l spin for a president 

If a non-resident 

In the hurdle race goes. 
Who knows? 

What tag is that on the Basswood bole — 
And pinned by a dart through the scroll ? 

76 



The scrip is the quill of Friar Tuck, 
I'll read it just for luck. 



MAID MARIAN LOST! 
Strayed: — Reward offered. , 

Saw ye my Mary Ann flit there, 

Or where her light foot stayed? 
Who spied the gleam of sunny hair 

Along the path she strayed? 
Ye'l know the face alike the peeps 

Of dawn in happy May : — 
Her spirit eyes the bell-blue deeps 

A-bloom on bank and brae. 

Mahap in Sherwood's Oakland tossed 

She's sniped by Boy-Scout Dan; 
'And in the windy forest lost — 

Who then might steal my Ann ? 
O darksome days that lack the flirt ? 

Where trend the pilgrim feet? 
Too free her heart to feel a hurt : — 

Too blithe its kindly beat. 

So if ye find an errant maid 

With sun-lit hair and eye — 
Then fetch my love-light from the glade 
Where hide her blushes shy. 
And you shall preen 
In Lincoln green, — 
(And swing for buck 
With the Reverend Tuck.) 

7-7 



Coax back the truant's rosy feet — 

My Merry-men — I pray; 
And ruddy heart-gold's lavish treat 

Shall Love's bright ransom pay. 
So trill a-down the greenwood May 

My lure-horn's mating charm. 
She'l know the Outlaw's homing lay : — 

The gloaming rush-light psalm. 

HIS 

ROBIN HOOD 

MARK 

The mark is an arrow 
Shot through the narrow 
Flitch of a willow switch. 
Rob's bow must be slow 

At the span — 
If he missed the willowy Ann. 

The maid of the hymn 

Will I hope — miss Jim. 
Mrs. Robin Hood is quite romancy. 
Mary A. can out-Nance Nancy. 
Ah me ! But lovers play tricks 
For the smile of an asterix ! 

If men only knew 

That a lass can be true! 
And that one bonny girl 
In the home-sweet twilight, 
Takes the mask off the whirl 
In a cabaret high-light! 

O, a bungalow hammock 
Gets the doe and the bannock! 



78 



But hark! Again the Hue! 
The stag-hounds bay the view ! 

Fast tilt the joyance crew — 

In green and gold — 

In scarlet bold — 

Against the leafy bowers 

Where blossom flowers ! 

And one in khaki — 

Ahead and larky. 

The coiling echos swirl the dells 

With mocking eddies 

Whose rhyming spread is 

A chime of bells. 

A-down the glens 

They drown the dens. 

And lilt-horn spells 

And yeoman yells 

Ring mad-peal mels : — 
Till Sherwood's Druid Oak rebels. 

No peep-glass Dryads now — go pranking on the 

Idle's yonder bank ! 
The hounds ! The hunter's View-Halloo ! 
And wild my red-roan's ululu ! 
Is boar or stag 
The royal swag 
The bloodhounds tag? 
Does spear or whinyara 
Spill his vineyard? 
Who shreds the shag? 
Who's in? It's him! 
You win! O Jim! 



79 



Here winds the briming tide to breast ! 

The tossing lion face is beaming: — 
I stroke the cool immortal crest: — 

And lo — my gallop all was dreaming ! 

Who saw my Chestnut's satin vest, 

Or heard his curb-chain tinkle? 
Did dawn-crow zest shy ofif his jest 

And speed the white feet's twinkle? 

O Barb of No-land's mystic shore — 

Your starry eyes grow dim with morning; 
The East but glowed : — 
The cock but crowed : — in dreams of yore ; 

And swift the elfin heart took warning. 

From morn of Merry England : — 

O Jack of the Swing-band — 

Flit to the Pix- winged strand. 
But with the jocund train 

That hunt from Castle-Airy — 
Where nod-folk loose the rein, 

A roan of mine will tarry : — 
Or lark the range of the Linden gleams 
With rovers old and storial ; — 
And nibble by the pasture streams 
On blue-grass hills pictorial. 

He'l call and look 

A-yont the brook 
Until the forest warden 
Lilts the rouse from cradle-dreams 
In woods across the [ordan. 



80 



Come Trix ! 

And quit that mix ! 

You get in trim 

And go with — Jim. 
Now keep away from Fleethart's flings ! 

You'l get a crimp — 

And you will Hmp. 
Quit you sweetheart ! You tear my — things. 

Nancy! You ivivc the belle 

Last night ; and you just looked swell ! 
Of all the — togs I have ever seen 

1 envy you that sea- foam green. 
Gay old Fleethart ! You just flew! 
Here's a lump of sugar for you. 

Now mind you Trix what you are about. 

I am ready Captain Abbot. 



81 



MAGDALENA-A PICTURE 

In the picture the face is inclined, and the eyes 
droop. 

Where the peering eyes of mortals 
May not haunt the trysting place : 
Swung within its viewless portals 
Hides an exile's spellful face. 

On the canvass softly cluster 
Ruffled waves of sunny hair ; 

And their golden rippled lustre 
Lights the beauty pictured there. 

Faultless curves the profile tracing: 
Sculptured neck and rounded chin : 

Penciled lights the shadows chasing : — 
Might an artist lover win. 

Rich the sparkling life-wine flushes 
Where the cheeks bright roses creep ; 

And with riper color brushes 
Lips that Eros' secret keep. 

But the long-lashed eyelid's veiling 
Shrouds the glance's sweet desire. 

Like the chastened marble — paling 
Some pure statute's earthy fire. 



82 



Who shall paint the wistful beaming 
Quenched beneath the masking shy? 

Who shall track the wilds of dreaming- 
Under pensive downcast eve? 

Were the mystic fancies dimming 
Left from girlhood's happy past. 

And the tidal heart-wave brimming 
Through a woman's soul at last? 

Where the shadowy fringing lashes 
Deep tlie coying spirit screen — 

.^lumber not revealing flashes, — 
1 leart illuming — Afagdalene? 

Still the sun-gold downward trailing 
Twinkles on the wavv tress. 

Rut the eyelid's dreamy veiling 
Foils the painter's wistfulness. 

There in Eden's apple-morning 
Still the face illusive seems: 

As the baffling Lisa's, dawning 
On Da Vinci's easel dreams. 

Ah, — the cunning master's meaning: — 
Who can fathom woman's heart? 

Were her spirit o'er us leaning, 
Vanquished both were song and art. 

So the Afage's touch has limed it; 

And the easel-flower will bloom 
Where the blight has never dimmed it, — 

In a heart-warm garden room. 



83 



REMINISCE 

On the hilltop loomed the tenting, 

And the dingle down below, 
Faint the winter Southwind scenting, 

Rimmed the bending river's flow. 
Once the sandy camp path wending 

While the mellow bugles played, — 
Blithe the revel mess call sending, — 

Wide a canvass portal swayed. 
In I peered for chuck and brimmer : 

But in Beauty's eyrie snared, — 
While the candle glims grew dimmer, — 

Bright beguiling glances dared. 
Then like faces kenned in vision 

When the wild-winged fancies rise 
On the reverie shores Elysian, 

Soon I felt more spellful eyes. 
Magnet lights in shadows perking, 

Lit the deeps behind their gaze: — 
Still those elfin lamps are lurking 

In Romance's twilight haze. 
Where the camp-fire's sly caresses 

Sliding up in foxy play. 
Twinkled in the darkling tresses, — 

Back was turned a sunny ray. 
Gone the evening's light and shading : 

But the brown hair's dark and bright, 
With its penciled wave unfading, 

Frames a picture on the night. 



84 



Still the red lip's music — falling 

In its liquid cadenced bars — 
Mocks in dreams with phantom calling ; 

And those eyes like gloaming stars, 
Tryst the hours with strange alluring. 

Lowly lie the rueful tents : 
Early lapsed their kind immuring: 

Ghostly moth-things prowl the rents. 
But the fire-fly face — reluming 

In its haunting beauty — smiles 
Through the Southland's fitful glooming. 

From the shadow laden Isles. 

So some rainbow whim of mortals 

Fading from espial fleets ; 
Though the heart its prison portals 

With a heyday rhythm beats. 
Thus some earthland apparition 

Once its flitting bounty lends, — 
Then in dreams that lull volition 

From a misty casement bends. 
And the spirit's lost ideal 

That the lowly earth denies, 
Beckons out beyond the real — 

Where the viewless kingdom lies. 
Nearer to its mystic border 

Souls in exile often dwell : — 
Stronger 'gainst its spectral warder 

Than their mortal senses tell. 

Now the camp-fire elves are banished 

To a cloudy-tented park. 
Long have lass and legion vanished 



85 



Where the bugle echoes larlc. 
Curtain-drop on canvass mansions 

Dims the dream of bygone time. 
Falhng faint the cornet chansons 

Float but wildered waifs of rhyme. 



86 



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